That one time I thought we were being taken

We had been itching to finally go backpacking and even more so once we bought the tent. We finished up our workaway and headed out for our trip early Monday morning. A worker at MacPack (where we bought our tent) recommended we try the Rangiwahia track about 1.5 hours from Palmerston. After navigating through several sheep paddocks with the most adorable newborn sheep, we arrived at the track. We spent the first two hours climbing some pretty steep uphills that completely exhausted us. While we were climbing we kept seeing a black helicopter circling the mountains around us, but we had no idea what it was doing. As we reached the highest point of our climb, we noticed the helicopter coming right at us. Of course, I immediately thought worse case scenario, that either we were being evacuated or taken by evil forces. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched Taken 2 a few nights ago. It becomes clear the helicopter wants to land right where we are standing so we started to run backwards out of the way. My nerves settle when I see that it’s an Air Force helicopter filled with friendly looking people. We introduced ourselves to the few workers who got dropped off to set up rat traps around the trail. Needless to say, it was really exciting to have an Air Force chopper land just feet away from us.

 

Look how cute the babies are!

 

See how that could look really scary?

 

 

Camera man Blake.

 

Luckily the people who got dropped off by the helicopter were nice enough to take our picture.

We reached the Rangiwahina hut a few hours later and cooked up some tuna and rice for dinner (anything tastes good after you’ve been hiking all day. New Zealand has a really extensive hut system where you can pay a fee, (around $15 a night, more expensive for popular tracks) to have a mattress, a sink, toilet, and use of the wood burning fireplace. We weren’t sure if camping was allowed (we are now thinking it wasn’t) but we wanted to use our new tent and not pay for the two of us to stay in the hut. No one else was there, so we decided to pitch out tent anyways. I guess I was worrying the whole night because I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that the rats they had mentioned earlier were definitely chewing on my backpack that was outside. Blake thinks I’m crazy and was only hearing the wind, but think, giant rats! That could’ve been bad.

We hiked back down to the car early the next morning and headed off to our next destination: Rotorua. The first thing we noticed when we arrived was that it smelled like fart everywhere. There’s a lot of sulfur and thermal activity which leads to the smell, but Blake appreciates the fact that he can fart and no one will ever know. We are working at the Funky Green Voyager hostel for the next two weeks in exchange for accommodation. Our house for the moment is a cute old campervan with a bed, dresser and mini fridge. We work for 2-3 hours each day, mostly cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets, and making beds. This is a very touristy town, so there are lot’s of things to do like whitewater rafting, skydiving, spas, and cave adventures. Unfortunately, everything costs a ton of money. Luckily, we have found some good free things, like hiking around Blue Lake and running through the extensive redwood forest. The hostel is only a five minute walk from the downtown, which has a ton of shops and restaurants and a really cool market every Thursday night. There’s definitely not a shortage of things to do here, so I’m sure we will stay busy!

Hike around Blue Lake

Redwoods!